Mental Health Across the Academic Career: Predictors, Protective Factors, and Intervention Strategies

Academia is a demanding environment where students, doctoral candidates, and researchers may experience academic pressure, competitive evaluation, precarious career pathways, publishing demands, isolation, financial insecurity, and challenges associated with international mobility or caregiving responsibilities. Research indicates elevated levels of distress and burnout among different academic populations, particularly postgraduate and early-career researchers, although prevalence and risk vary across disciplines, countries, career stages, and social groups. Mental health in academia can be shaped by the interaction of individual characteristics, supervisory and peer relationships, workload, organizational cultures, and wider sociocultural influences. In response to growing concerns, universities and research institutions are implementing counselling services, peer-support, psychoeducation, and digital interventions, but evidence regarding their effectiveness, accessibility, sustainability, and contextual suitability requires further exploration. Further investigation on psychological, biobehavioral, interpersonal, and institutional perspectives is needed to clarify potential mechanisms of risk and resilience and to identify effective mental health interventions and support.This Research Topic aims to advance understanding of the factors that influence mental health and wellbeing across the academic career, from undergraduate study through doctoral training and research employment. It will examine how individual, relational, academic, organizational, and sociocultural processes contribute to psychological distress and resilience mechanisms. In addition, it will evaluate interventions designed to prevent psychological distress and promote wellbeing. Contributions may therefore address risk and protective factors, how these processes differ across academic populations and contexts, and mental health intervention effectiveness.To gather further insights into mental health and wellbeing among students and researchers across diverse academic and institutional contexts, this Research Topic welcomes articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:• Predictors and protective factors for wellbeing, distress, and resilience mechanisms across academic career stages.• Supervisory relationships, peer support, family relationships, and other relational influences on academic mental health.• Workload, employment security, and organizational climate influencing individual mental health.• Individual differences and biobehavioral processes, including stress reactivity, emotion regulation, coping, psychophysiological measures, cognitive tasks, and observational methods.• Development, implementation, and evaluation of counselling, psychoeducational, preventive, and peer-support interventions.• Digital and technology-assisted mental health approaches, including virtual reality and AI-supported tools.• Experiences of groups exposed to specific social vulnerabilities, including international students, LGBTQIA+ students and researchers, people with disabilities, racialized and ethnic minority groups, and individuals with caregiving responsibilities • Mental health policy, service access, institutional responses, and strategies for creating healthier, more inclusive and safer academic environments.• Quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, longitudinal, and comparative research across disciplines, countries, and institutional settings in relation to this collection’s themes and scope.This collection welcomes a variety of article types including Original Research, Systematic Reviews, Reviews, Perspective, Policy and Practice Reviews, and Community Case Study article types, using quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods designs. Topic editors: Valeria Saladino, Paola Venuti, Francesco Craig Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/83846/mental-health-across-the-academic-career-predictors-protective-factors-and-intervention-strategies